


Gun Smoke

by ParadoxR



Series: The Rest You Earn [1]
Category: Stargate (1994), Stargate SG-1
Genre: Canon Backstory, Episode: s01e01/2 Children of the Gods, Episode: s02e21 1969, Episode: s03e02 Seth, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-07
Updated: 2015-05-16
Packaged: 2018-03-29 09:35:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 4,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3891394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ParadoxR/pseuds/ParadoxR
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In retrospect, it really was inevitable. Standalone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The First You Pay For (Prologue)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rated for brief but salty cursing and angst. It only goes shippy at the very end; this is mostly a canon prequel to Sam and Jack's original not-getting-along-ness. Thank you to my beta, bethanyactually.

**8 August 1990 (Day 2 of Desert Shield) in Dammam, Saudi Arabia:**

“Welcome to Dammam, Lieutenant.”

Sam tugs at her camouflage and cuts through the sweltering aircraft hangar towards the friendly tech sergeant. “Thank you. Sergeant Bleser, is it?”

“Yes, ma’am.” The thirty-three-year-old shop chief wipes his hands on a rag and offers one to his new kid. “And that’s Sergeant Cross.” He gestures to the man jogging across their sparse maintenance depot.

Sam’s grin reaches both of them as she wonders again how everyone’s adjusted to the heat so quickly. It’s got to be at least hundred and ten in here. “Nice to meet both of you, gentlemen.”

Bleser smiles at his respectful new boss. “I know this place doesn’t look like much yet, ma’am, but I’ll be your shop chief. Cross handles the squadron’s general battlefield training.”

The bulkier man nods to his own name. “I hear you’ll need do to some fly-alongs with us, Lieutenant. Have much experience?”

Sam gives the obvious answer as more sweat trickles down her collar. “Just what the Academy and aircrews get. Two weeks on survival and evasion.”

Cross buries his snort. “I’m afraid that doesn’t count for much when we’re below a hundred feet, ma’am.” He waves around the austere building. “We’re the guys Special Forces call when they get shot. I can’t put you in a rescue like that.”

Sam interjects carefully. “I’m not here for flights where I’ll be in the way, Sergeant. But if this is going to work, I need to ensure each upgrade is intuitive for our pilots.” She leaves the ‘or else’ to his more experienced imagination.

The large special ops vet frowns at her tact. “Alright, ma’am. But I can’t let you bypass training just because Saddam invaded Kuwait. Combatives, land navigation, weapons, tactics, medical. This won’t be your Academy’s basics anymore, LT.” He inserts an abbreviation for ‘lieutenant’ that a lot sounds more like ‘arrogant college kid’.

Sam raises her chin slightly but just smiles. “That’s great, Sergeant. I wouldn’t want it any other way.” God, she is _so_ glad she didn’t become an astronaut.

Cross wraps up while they’re still on good terms and jogs away over the sand-covered cement. Bleser swigs at his canteen and starts his new LT on a shop tour. It’s mostly empty now except for a busted engine block that’s been very effectively leaking oil all over his t-shirt and cropped black hair. “I for one am glad you’re here, ma’am. Truth is, I have no clue what we’re actually gonna be doing.”

Sam grins. “Just some avionics upgrades for the Pave Low helicopters.” Granted, Sam has no idea what he’s doing to that cracked piston.

The sergeant cocks a decidedly ‘let’s get something straight, kid’ eyebrow at his new twenty-two-year-old. “I meant how we’re going to integrate your new ENS into the 1553 without losing flight intuitiveness.”

“Oh.” Sam manages not to wince at the repeated reminder that they’ve been doing this for fifteen years and she’s the kid that just graduated. “I’d appreciate your insight on that.”

He smiles at the save. “You’ve got it, ma’am.” The tech sergeant grabs a small bottle and starts probing around a stubborn manifold failure. “So I hear you’ve been on educational leave since graduation.” Which was, what, all of two months ago? Granted, his was too, but he’s been in this business for sixteen years. Her sane classmates won’t even be flying in this one; they’re still in pilot training.

Sam glances sideways at the apparently leading question. “Yes. But I kept working on this through Hanscom.” How does he even know that?

Bleser smirks. He’s not a huge fan of being any LT’s first subordinate, but you work with what you’ve got until you can train ‘em. At least she wants to learn and isn’t the stereotypically entitled Academy idiot.

Sam manages to follow what he does next well enough to test it with a multimeter.

Bleser nods at the meter’s reading and walks them further into the hangar. “You paid anyone to salute you yet, ma’am?”

She cocks an eyebrow at his fake innocuousness. “Can’t say that I have.” Sam’s been more about bucking tradition than following it, if the single other woman she’s seen here is any indication.

The tech sergeant grins in jest. “You know, ma’am, we’re pretty big on tradition in this business. Heritage is so important these days.”

Sam steps backwards in their nominally ‘no salute’ zone and lets herself exchange one. She unfastens a cargo pocket and hands him a ten riyal note.

Bleser snorts. “Close enough.” He tucks it away and turns back to her. “You know how it works, LT?”

Sam rehooks a button and nods affirmatively.

“The first salute you pay for.” He hands her a radio and a headset. “The rest you earn.”


	2. You Might Be Good at It

**9 March 1991 at Walter Reed Medical Center:**

Sam leans up in the hospital bed and rubs at her full arm cast with a cold shudder.

“There’s someone here to see you, Lieutenant.”

Thank God. Sam’s going out of her mind in here. “Who is it?”

The young nurse smiles awkwardly from the doorway. “She says she doesn’t actually know you.” The woman shrugs. “Is that alright?”

Sam furrows her brow but nods anyway. She hasn’t gotten many visitors, and they just discharged her roommate.

The mystery woman walks in without a word and looks Sam up and down. She’s old, and slight, not military and probably pushing seventy.

“Can I help you, ma’am…?” Sam asks in an effort to get her name.

The older woman just smiles and studies every inch of Sam’s face. “I understand you’re something of a war hero, Lieutenant.”

Sam snorts involuntarily. “Certainly not, ma’am. There’s no special glory in getting blown up during a firefight.” Not like their pilot, who deliberately killed himself in that crash to save them. Sam shivers again. “We just did our best from the ground.” Which isn’t nearly as good as having them in air. Sam forces herself to shut up and not glance at the solitary Achievement Medal on her bedside table. She’s got to find a way of not looking down onto battlefields.

Sam’s mystery woman nods again but still seems preoccupied with studying her.

“Is there something I can do for you, Miss…?” Sam prompts again with painful breath.

“Doctor. Call me Doctor L.” The elderly woman finally commits to stepping forward. “So I guess this means you won’t be back in combat any time soon.”

Sam balks slightly. “I’ll be fine.” Okay, so she’ll be out for years. But damned if they’re going to get rid of her this easily.

The correction doesn’t seem to affect the old doctor. “So you’ll be needing something to do until then. I hear you’re a bit of a scientist.”

She blinks. God, is this a recruiting pitch? Sam already knows which career she’s chasing. “I’m an engineer—applied physicist. I was doing my master’s at Brown in optical systems.”

The woman perks up. “Optics? Like electromagnetic time travel stabilization?”

Sam’s broken ribs catch on her laugh. “Um, no. Like retrofitting special operations helicopters. I work combat ops from Saudi Arabia.” Or she did. Sam’s staring down the barrel of a very premature job change for the time being. But not forever.

The woman frowns slightly. “Ah. So you never wanted to be an astronaut?”

She grits her teeth slightly. Please don’t say her father sent this woman. He hasn’t even been in to see Sam himself yet. “I thought about it. But I’ve committed to a career much closer to the ground.” On it, if they finally let her try. And if this seventy-year-old academic is about to lecture her on the inadequacy of women on the battlefield, Sam is walking out of this room, shrapnel wounds in her shins or not. She’d trained for this, Goddammit. Let her see some flyboy astronaut do what she just did in Iraq.

The mysterious doctor ignores Sam’s internal diatribe. “You haven’t thought about getting a doctorate?”

Sam cocks an eyebrow at the civilian. “That’s not typically a great career move in the officer corps. And I don’t need it for what I’ll be doing.” Bee-lining for a PhD after less than a year on combat aircrew would take something…catastrophic. Sam tries to flex her arm.

The woman looks unconvinced. “Really? You’ve had much luck in This Man’s Army with only their same qualifications?” The old doctor doesn’t push more than that, but Sam bristles heavily anyway. The elder woman softens her tone again with a non sequitur. “I have something to show you.”

Sam keeps her heated frown but finally thinks to pinch off her morphine drip.

The old woman pulls a file out of her satchel and walks up to Sam’s shoulder. “It’s an electromagnetic signal from a certain device. Consider it a sample retro-engineering problem. Feedback analysis.”

Sam takes the papers and squints through her continuous haze. Interesting. “You say this is an error message?”

“It might be. Some sort of feedback.” The woman studies her noncommittally.

“It is.” Sam sketches over the curves without looking up. Incredible. “You see where it’s returning the received signal and then delineating the frequency range it actually expects at each amplitude. It then gives the suggested ratio adjustments for each parameter with respect to the inferred input.” It’s almost beautiful. Sam grins and turns back to the front page. “I’ve never seen anything provide such an intuitive analog output. It’s really quite clever.” She looks up at the now baffled doctor. Sam has to say she thoroughly enjoys the look, after being such a rookie Officer in Charge in her Dammam squadron.

“Thank you.” Doctor L’s answer is blunt, and she takes the folder immediately towards the open doorway.

“Wait,” Sam tries to stop the woman’s premature exit. “That’s…interesting.” She eyes the folder lamely. “What is it?”

The old doctor smiles too artfully. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you that, Lieutenant.” She seems to consider herself for a moment. “But you could look into space-time electromagnetics. You might be good at it.”

Sam’s mouth flaps as the woman taps thoughtfully on her doorframe.

“And, Lieutenant.”

Sam looks up from squinting at her morphine drip in confusion. “Yes?”

_“Sprechen Sie Deutsch?”_

Sam manages to spit out a ‘my German is terrible’ in what is quite possibly the second worst German accent the doctor’s ever heard.


	3. No Time like the Present

**28 October 1992 at the Air Force Office of Scientific Research in Arlington, VA:**

“First Lieutenant Samantha Carter?”

Sam looks up from her dress blue trousers and blinks the transatlantic jet lag from her eyes. “Yes.”

“The director will see you now.”

Finally. She quashes yet another thought about the paper she should be writing and heads for the nondescript laboratory office.

“It’s very nice to see you again, Lieutenant.”

Sam blinks herself to a halt in the open doorway. “Doctor…”

The elderly woman smiles. “Call me Catherine. I see you took my career advice.” Catherine Langford gestures at the young doctoral candidate with the latest issue of _Astroparticle Physics_. “Congratulations on the article.”

“Thank you. It was a team effort.”

Catherine hasn’t stopped grinning. “I understand you’re moving through your degree quite quickly.”

Sam takes the offered seat, still stunned. “Yes. It’s quicker in Europe, but still a couple years.”

Catherine nods and sits behind her incongruously authoritative desk. “Yes. Well, I understand you were quite the turnaround artist during the Gulf War. Perhaps you can handle this work remotely until we straighten things out. You’d finish here with us.” Catherine picks up folder but stops short of handing it to her lieutenant. “That is, if you’re interested?”

Sam really isn’t having much luck catching up with this. “I’m sorry, what work is that?”

“My engineers need some help. We’ve been doing this for a long time and they’ve done a fantastic job, but they need a bit of redirection. A Tiger Team, if you will. I thought of you.” She taps the prestigious astrophysics journal on its cover.

Sam finds that odd considering she wouldn’t even be in this line of work if not for their very strange conversation a year ago, but that’s a long story. “I’d love to help you, ma’am, but I have a service obligation to the Air Force. I’m supposed to teach at the Academy before going back to special operations engineering.” Or so Sam keeps telling herself. She squeezes her fist and lets the pain shock through her wrist.

Catherine characteristically bypasses her objection. “My program needs a Pentagon liaison, specifically. Someone to get us on that track, sell it to the military establishment.” She leans meaningfully across the desk. “I need someone to speak the language, convince the generals, lead the troops. You very come highly recommended.” Mostly by Catherine herself, but that’s beside the point.

Sam is highly flattered despite finding that extraordinarily difficult to believe. “Thank you,” she manages.

“You’d start simple until you make captain. Direct the Tiger Team, look at future issues, risk management policies. But I plan ahead. Eventually—soon—we’ll need someone to make the program itself a reality. A team leader to study the technology directly. Forward deployed. You’d be a strong candidate for that job if you started here.”

Sam’s eyes light up enough to dim the fluorescents overhead. “That’s…” she tries not to sound too excited, “intriguing.” It doesn’t work very well. She’s going nuts inside the laboratory’s too-pristine walls. “But I’m afraid I cannot just unilaterally accept an offer. I have a career, and an obligation. As an officer I’m, well, assigned my assignments.” Despite this sounding like exactly what Sam’s been striving for her entire life. Cruel world.

Catherine manages to keep her grandmotherly smile. “Oh, I doubt that will be a problem for me, Lieutenant. I’m a GS-14.”

Sam chokes on the air in her lungs and tries to breathe normally in front of the civilian version of a lieutenant colonel. “My apologies, ma’am.”

“So that’s a yes?” The doctor naturally ignores her surprise.

Sam doesn’t recall saying anything resembling yes, but “Yes.” Absolutely.

“Great.” Catherine sets the folder across the desk. “I’ll go get your team.”

“Right now?” Sam asks before she can stop herself.

“There’s no time like the present, Samantha.”


	4. This Can't Be Happening

**16 April 1996 at Creech AFB’s Ground Combat Training Center:**

“Captain.” The airman points at the phone in his hand without preamble.

Sam nods to her second-in-command and jogs through the maze of terrain mockups and doctrine manuals. “Captain Carter speaking.” She blinks almost immediately. “Yes, sir. How did it? Yes—yes, sir. Right away.” Sam turns to look at the team she’d assembled as it works through tabletop tactics for the Ring in a dozen different forest, desert, and urban environments. This can’t be happening.

“Cap?” Sam’s non-titular 2IC, actually a retired gunnery sergeant, cocks his head at the stunned junior officer.

“We need to get back to Cheyenne.” Sam says it simply and starts prepping to leave.

“What’s up?”

“They broke the Ring.”

The Gunny doesn’t bother pointing out the inadequacy of that information as he helps repack their control station.

“They broke it trying to run surveillance for the team they sent.” She watches her words carefully.

“The…” There isn’t much that can make a retired Force Recon platoon sergeant pause, but this manages to. “The team they sent?”

“Yes.” Sam’s brow pinches as she tries to figure out how to explain that to her people. She lets the assorted sociologists, biologists, and engineers, most of them also veterans, keep drilling on their dozens of Ring security scenarios.

“But…we’re here.” Sergeant Gedo elects to state the obvious rather than let his anger flare up.

“Yes.” Sam reaches back to the phone and steadies her voice enough to set up emergency transportation for them. “We’ll need to rush. That team is late, and the Ring’s offline so Cheyenne can’t call them.”

Gedo reminds himself for the seven hundredth time these past three years that he preferred his career watching and shooting bad guys over this ridiculous command crap officers put up with. “You didn’t know?” he asks quietly as Sam hangs up the phone.

She shakes her head.

“So you’re telling me the guys out there are just absolutely clueless?” He snaps closed a tactical case. “No one’s trained on how it works, what we know of operations, how to run security, what to watch for, what they need test?” His voice rises slightly at each punch. This Gunny didn’t spend seventeen years in Marine infantry with another career in intelligence analysis to have General Winston West stomp on all his work. He’s got five _years_ invested in training people for clandestine tactical operations through that unidirectional cosmic bull’s eye. Why would anyone _think_ to barge in without preparing for something this important? People are gonna die out there, mark his words. Giza spent fifteen years in this business, and the plan wasn’t to just make shit up after they turned it on. “Idiots.”

Sam’s certainly not going to disagree.


	5. Really Hit of Miss

**10 April 1996 in the C-Ring of the Pentagon:**

Connie forgets to wince as the colonel doesn’t quite slam his office door. Again. She sighs and orders another round of flowers for O’Neill’s wife.

 

Jack picks up his tennis ball and thawps it against the wall. He’s served under his fair share of dimwits over the decades, but there is nothing in this universe like General Winston West. And who the fuck let him fill the whole office with guys from the same damn career field? It’s not like they’re flying jets in the Strategic Plans Directorate. No, sir, you can’t just cut a year out of special ops battlefield training. Yes, sir, it does take longer than pilot; that’s why it’s called ‘special ops’. No, sir, you can’t just get rid of an entire 2,000-man Special Tactics unit. Yes, sir, people _will_ die if you do that.

“Idiots!” He crashes into the overly padded chair with a dissatisfying hiss. Two _years_ of this shit before he can go back to Florida and command his 800-man group. Jack’s ready to fuck up the assholes who think all it takes to run a deep reconnaissance mission is a pilot who can also walk. He slaps at his speakerphone as it buzzes. “ _What?_ ”

“You have a meeting with your Branch chiefs in ten minutes, sir.” Connie takes her hand off the button to tug it through her long curls. Her new Division chief is really hit or miss with anger these days. The tennis ball banging against their shared wall doesn’t help.

Jack hears that tone in her voice and heads out to answer in person. “Anything else, Conn?” He lets his door close on its own.

“More sign-offs, and here are your talking papers for tomorrow.” Connie plops them in front of him rather unceremoniously.

Jack scribbles his signature on everything that isn’t written by one of West’s cronies—which isn’t much—and throws the rest in his inbox.

“And your wife called again.”

Jack’s head jerks up. “Yeah?” Uh oh.

“She’d like to see you at some point this week.” As opposed to last week. Connie doesn’t make eye contact for this; she’s only been working for the colonel a few months and hasn’t met his wife. She’s starting to like her better anyway.

Jack nods diligently and rolls his shoulders in their dress blue straightjacket. “Yeah. Call Conklyn’s and order some tulips, okay?” Put it on his tab.

“I did, sir.” Except lilies instead, because Sara hates tulips. He’ll notice eventually. “But I don’t think that’s going do it.”

His voice turns a little gruffer. “Yeah?” Jack studies the dark-haired Kentuckian that may or may not know more about his high school sweetheart than he does. At least they talk more often.

“There was another break-in on your street. She doesn’t feel safe, sir.”

Jack scrubs his brow and wonders for the tenth time this month whether his marriage is going to survive either these new eagles on his shoulders or his two years in Washington’s hellhole. And it’s survived a lot of his hellholes, albeit not with much gusto. He’s mostly kept trucking because Charlie’s a momma’s boy. “Clear my whole schedule for tomorrow. And call Conklyn’s back—it’s lilies, right? She likes lilies.”

Connie finally smiles at her temperamental boss. Yes, he’s hit or miss, but his hits can be pretty endearing. “I’ll do that.” She looks over his shoulder in recollection. “But you have a one-on-one with General West tomorrow, sir. What should I tell him?”

“To go fuck himself.” Jack jerks his head emphatically and picks up one of her snazzy gel pens.

“Um.” Connie continues looking over his shoulder and realizes that this was probably at least partially her fault.

“Why don’t you be a good girl and clear his schedule for Friday as well?” West doesn’t bother to step further into his Division chief’s office. “He’s going to need a long weekend.”


	6. Doesn’t Deserve It

**14 April 1996 in the D-Ring of the Pentagon:**

Jack stares vacantly, barely keeping his eyes straight. “I’m on bereavement leave.”

“No, you’re not.” West leans in too rigidly for what he’s doing. “You’re out, Colonel.”

He just blinks.

“You’re being retired. Sign off, or I’ll issue an Article and remove you myself.” West taps his pen. “And you know with everything you’ve done in here that no one’s going to stop that.” He gets up to circle the colonel who until four days ago was trying desperately to steer West’s beloved Air Force towards obsolescence. The radical still has too many supporters in these walls.

Jack can’t move.

 

**16 April 1996 in Suburban Arlington, VA:**

Jack quivers silently and stares at it in his lap. He threw the gun in the lake, because why not be more irresponsible. But his combat knife is just as sharp as it was when he first got the beret. A symbol of skill, dedication, leadership. He doesn’t deserve it. It was for Charlie, someday. His dead son, his devastated wife, his abandoned men. It was for them.

Sara can’t even look at his face anymore. Maybe if he cut it off… Jack fingers the knife’s tip and lets the blood trickle down his thumb.

Somewhere below his abyss, the doorbell rings.


	7. His Next Ten Years

**16 April 1996 in the D-Ring of the Pentagon:**

“You’ve got a new assignment,” West declares in the only tone he has for men like this.

Jack stares blankly at the same spot he did yesterday. Or was it today.

“You leave for Colorado Springs in forty minutes.” West bangs a folder on his desk and commits to the plan he must play. For the good of the country.

“I’m unfit for duty,” someone answers in Jack’s voice.

“I’m reactivating you. You’re taking over Langford’s office.”

A switch finally trips somewhere in the subordinate’s mind. He’s been duped. “Why?”

“Her office is underperforming. Irresponsible, dangerous. You’ll fix it.”

Jack can’t process whether to believe that. Scientists are horrible commanders, but he forgets who Langford is besides the name that usually gets cursed in the breath after his own. “I can’t fix that.”

West huffs. “I’m not looking for you to turn around a failed organization, Airman.” As if he could. “You are removing a line item from my budget.”

“No.” Jack’s never felt any desire to play that game for West before, and he’s not about to start now.

“Failure is not an option here, Colonel. Their work is against the interests of the United States government. You will take a staff, and when you find something that potentially endangers our interests, you will destroy it. Review the details en route.”

“No.” This is too fast to even be real, but it’s the right thing to say. He’s being played.

West rubs the sore on his neck and resigns to playing his full hand. “Colonel. Don’t you want something good to come of your death?”

Jack blinks the haze into his crinkled dress pants.

“You are not coming back from this one, Jack.” West levels a look at the man whose ideas have almost destroyed his next ten years of acquisitions. “But very well. If you’re abdicating, Langford will have to supply someone herself.”

Jack shifts slightly. Scientist or not, there’s no reason to make anyone else complacent in this power play. That place is well protected, important.

West opens a folder on his desk. “I’m sure she’ll provide me someone if I require it. A captain, probably; there’s a young doctor in the lab who’s even foolish enough to relish martyrdom once she knows. I’ll brief her myself.”

“I’ll do it.” Jack finally meets eyes with the man who’s trying to kill him. That isn’t a bad thing. He’s offered up the right way to die.


	8. That Couldn’t Have Been

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is actually a separate tag I was planning, but the comments on this fic have me thinking about it too much. For cyced and Kalinysta, because it’s your fault. I pushed this through without a beta—sorry, Bethany, it was gnawing a hole in my brain.

**Sometime, Someplace She Doesn’t Recognize:**

Sam shifts slightly. It’s not uncomfortable in here, but she can’t remember why that’s odd. She picks up her offering box and continues down the long corridor.

“You,” someone orders loudly.

Sam turns immediately and approaches him at his curled finger. The side door leads to an altar room, large and well adorned.

The robed man grabs her by the jaw. “This one looks familiar.”

Sam blinks into his eyes but doesn’t move.

“You are new to the worship?” he demands loudly.

She nods. “Yes. Seth is life, Seth is—”

He cuts her off angrily. “Eli!” The teenager approaches quickly. “You were part of the First Attempt?”

Eli nods. “Yes, to access the Ring four years ago.”

“You worked under the man that Master had in the capitol.” The first man knocks the box out of Sam’s hands and clamps her by the throat.

Eli pauses, afraid to contradict him. “I did not know the Man. I was one of those who targeted the Boy. Convinced him to get his father’s attention.”

He sneers and jerks Sam around painfully. She doesn’t wince. “Do you remember this?”

Eli studies her face carefully. “I do not.” He pauses to run a hand down her cheek and collarbone. “You believe she worked for the man who held the Ring?” Eli pulls her chin further upward and glares into her eyes. “When we killed the Boy?”

The lead man nods and begins to call for someone else.

Sam feels the heat around her and sits bolt upright. Her skull cracks on the headboard.

Jack stops himself from falling off the mattress and reaches out for her. “Sam?”

The dizziness only worsens as new arms encircle her bare torso. When they killed the boy. For his father’s attention.

“Sam?” Jack asks again, feeling the back of her head. It’s not wet this time. Now he gets why she didn’t have a headboard at her place. He ought to just take this one off rather than replace it.

She manages to nod as he offers her the water glass she didn’t have to ask for. “I’m fine.” That couldn’t have been real.

Jack intertwines his fingers over their new wedding rings and doesn’t push matters.

“It’s just a dream,” she clarifies quietly. They’re doing so well. Why now? Why _today_?

He hugs her again. “Fifth?” He finally breathes as she sets her head back on his chest. It shakes ‘no’. “Jolinar?” he asks quietly.

Sam turns into his chest hair and tries to block out the fact that he’s being nice and she’s being miserable.

“Abduction?” Jack whispers and takes back the empty glass.

Sam pushes his arms off suddenly and clinches her jaw at the dizziness. “Stop.” ‘Abduction’ of course, is her husband’s word for ‘raped and tortured by aliens’, because he still refuses to vocalize the fact that she’s been brutalized in more ways than are anatomically possible.

Jack lets his arms fall to their thighs. “I’m sorry.” He winces softly. “You know you can tell me whenever you want to.”

Sam breathes and looks up at her new husband. It was just a dream. She can’t do this to him.

\-----

The End or Something like It


End file.
